ACLU: Racism of the Drug War Verified

Blacks are nearly four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than whites – even though usage rates are comparable, according to a report issued today by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Marijuana enforcement has unfairly targeted black people, said the report, entitled “The War on Marijuana in Black and White.”

The racial disparity in marijuana arrests has markedly increased in the last 10 years, the ACLU found. Although black people are 3.7 times more likely to be arrested for possession than white people, blacks are now 30 times more likely to to be arrested for the drug in the counties with the widest disparities, they found.

The ACLU also analyzed the wider law enforcement handling of current marijuana laws. States spent an estimated $3.61 billion enforcing marijuana possession laws – in 2010 alone.

The current incarceration rate deprives record numbers of individuals of their liberty, disproportionately affects people of color, and has at best a minimal effect on public safety. Meanwhile, the crippling cost of imprisoning increasing numbers of Americans saddles government budgets with rising debt and exacerbates the current fiscal crisis confronting states across the nation.

Private prison companies, however, essentially admit that their business model depends on locking up more and more people. For example, in a 2010 Annual Report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) stated: “The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by . . . leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices . . . .” As incarceration rates skyrocket, the private prison industry expands at exponential rates, holding ever more people in its prisons and jails, and generating massive profits.

We fought a war in this nation to stop this shit, yet it returns, in different iterations, generation after generation.

Thank you, Ronald Reagan and your fellating conservative acolytes, for your dedication, over decades, to promoting slavery by another name. The irony, of course, is this that they constantly pretend they are promoting freedom.

What about it, Congress?

Are you going to continue this repulsive slide into neo-Confederate racism as YOUR LEGACY, or are you going to address the way in which the laws you have created have been nothing more than a cover for the most disgusting legacy of government since this nation was founded?

You'd think that, maybe after more than two hundred years, you might get this one right.

But you'd have to assume Congress is something other than the bought and sold peons for big business... and they continually prove the majority of them are nothing but.

7. Another article:

The Top 10 Most Startling Facts About People of Color and Criminal Justice in the United States

8. Once convicted, black offenders receive longer sentences compared to white offenders. The U.S. Sentencing Commission stated that in the federal system black offenders receive sentences that are 10 percent longer than white offenders for the same crimes. The Sentencing Project reports that African Americans are 21 percent more likely to receive mandatory-minimum sentences than white defendants and are 20 percent more like to be sentenced to prison.
9. Voter laws that prohibit people with felony convictions to vote disproportionately impact men of color. An estimated 5.3 million Americans are denied the right to vote based on a past felony conviction. Felony disenfranchisement is exaggerated by racial disparities in the criminal-justice system, ultimately denying 13 percent of African American men the right to vote. Felony-disenfranchisement policies have led to 11 states denying the right to vote to more than 10 percent of their African American population.

10. Studies have shown that people of color face disparities in wage trajectory following release from prison. Evidence shows that spending time in prison affects wage trajectories with a disproportionate impact on black men and women. The results show no evidence of racial divergence in wages prior to incarceration; however, following release from prison, wages grow at a 21 percent slower rate for black former inmates compared to white ex-convicts. A number of states have bans on people with certain convictions working in domestic health-service industries such as nursing, child care, and home health care—areas in which many poor women and women of color are disproportionately concentrated.

8. great link - thanks

...surely has an impact upon employment opportunities, beyond the basics of economic life, such as access to opportunities by who you know, the history of wealth accumulation among a very few, to the exclusion of everyone else, and laws that have worked to undo advances previously made in this nation to actually have a govt. that serves the people of this nation, not just the rich people of this nation.

From 1980 to 2008, the number of people incarcerated in America quadrupled-from roughly 500,000 to 2.3 million people. Today, the US is 5% of the World population and has 25% of world prisoners.

From The Sentencing Project's "Prison Privatization and the Use of Incarceration" (2004) - the War on Drugs became the spur to create private prisons because of overcrowding in prisons from the laws enacted (Mandatory Minimums, Three Strikes, Stop and Frisk, sentencing disparities based upon race.)

The current for-profit prison system, begun in the 1980s, has made the U.S. more of a penal colony than China - that's the gift from conservatives that keeps on giving, year after year, with cumulative effects on earning power over a lifetimes, as well as effects on employment options.

-African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population
-African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites
-Together, African American and Hispanics comprised 58% of all prisoners in 2008, even though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately one quarter of the US population.
-5 times as many Whites are using drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of Whites
-African Americans serve virtually as much time in prison for a drug offense (58.7 months) as whites do for a violent offense (61.7 months).

This isn't the first time various states have used prison to deny rights to African-Americans. During Reconstruction, whites could arrest blacks (mostly men) and put them on work gangs - and this was never challenged because of the racism that undergirded the practice among the powerful.

Another function of the for-profit prison system is to increase population numbers in rural, predominantly white areas of states, which gives more voting power to those who are elected from those areas - and this, as well, becomes a self-reinforcing form of racism because it is in the vested interests of politicians and certain members of the population to create economies built on imprisoning other members of society.

9. Yes I see it much the same way

There were also racist housing lending laws that contributed to the lack of inheritable wealth in African Americans up til the 70's i think (i have a book on this somewhere) This created economic inequities that were and are difficult to overcome. So the way i see it 1) institutionalize racism in every area 2) poverty becomes generational 3) lock up a significant portion of the male population, leaving impoverished single parent families 4) slowly erode or simply erase any affirmative action law that helps overcome institutional racism 5) privatize prison systems and fill them using in place racist laws.

10. The drug was is a cruel, expensive, train wreck of a joke.

11. One pot arrest every 42 sec in 2011

One Marijuana Arrest Occurs Every 42 Seconds In U.S.: FBI Report

With just over one week before voters in Colorado, Oregon and Washington states will decide whether or not to legalize and regulate marijuana for adult use, the FBI released a startling new report revealing that police in the U.S. arrest someone for marijuana every 42 seconds.

According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting data, there were a total of 1.5 million drug arrests made nationwide in 2011, and out of those arrests, about 750,000 were for marijuana (just under half, 49.5 percent) -- that's one marijuana arrest every 42 seconds and one drug arrest every 21 seconds in the U.S.

13. Here's a link to the ACLU report

The aggressive enforcement of marijuana possession laws needlessly ensnares hundreds of thousands of people into the criminal justice system and wastes billions of taxpayers’ dollars. What’s more, it is carried out with staggering racial bias. Despite being a priority for police departments nationwide, the War on Marijuana has failed to reduce marijuana use and availability and diverted resources that could be better invested in our communities.